How Can Career Switchers and Teachers Without Formal Training Be Quickly Prepared to Teach Engineering and Technology Education?

Old Dominion University (ODU) provides a six-hour, hands on workshop to train technology education teachers in design-based learning, production laboratory safety, and laboratory management. The teachers are provided with information about technology education content and pedagogy as well as safety contracts, legal liability, and machine use and maintenance. Teachers in this workshop learn (or update) important laboratory safety procedures and tool skills through instruction, demonstrations, and an active learning project. The workshop is co-hosted by the ODU Technology Education Program and the Virginia Technology and Engineering Education Association (VTEEA). Three workshops have been held and program interest is increasing. The first workshop had 10 attendees while the second had 20 with a waiting list of 15 teachers. The third workshop was hosted by Arlington public schools and had nine teachers. A new program comprising of six, two-hour sessions is being conducted with Virginia Beach City Public Schools. Professional Development points are provided through the Virginia Department of Education. The teachers are provided materials and instruction on professionalism, ethics, and professional organization involvement

Automated Fault-Detection for Small Satellite Pointing Control Systems Using One-Sided Learning

In this paper, we propose a ground-based automated novelty detection system for a small satellite attitude dynamics control system using a one-sided learning algorithm: One-Class Support Vector Machine (OC-SVM) method. This fault-detection system was designed to only learn from nominal behavior of the satellite during the commissioning phase and to identify and detect anomalies when there was a subtle behavioral failure in the attitude control system. The detection system was trained by only observing the nominal attitude dynamics behavior of a small satellite for a period of time. Training data was obtained from reaction wheel outputs in a healthy attitude control system, and reaction wheel currents and angular velocities were selected as training features. A one-class classifier was built from a hyperplane decision function during training. An adaptive Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO) method was utilized to solve the quadratic problem in the application of OC-SVM algorithm to provide an optimal solution for the hyperplane decision function. Two tests were performed on the system to validate its feasibility and detection accuracy. Untrained reaction wheel bearing failures were added into the attitude control system validation tests to examine whether the fault-detection system was capable of detecting and diagnosing the reaction wheel failures. Training and testing performance for the fault-detection system are presented with discussion

Anadromy in brown trout (Salmo trutta): A review of the relative roles of genes and environmental factors and the implications for management and conservation

While many brown trout (Salmo trutta) populations spend their entire life cycle in freshwater, especially as river-lake migrants or river residents, others show facultative anadromy. That is, some trout migrate to sea while other individuals of the same population remain within their natal river. Sea trout can give rise to resident offspring and vice versa, although there is a strong tendency to track the parental life history. Anadromy delivers better feeding and thus larger size, which results in higher fecundity in females, enhanced mate choice, and other reproductive benefits. River residence, more prevalent in males as anadromy conveys fewer benefits, can give higher survival and avoids the energy expenditure required by anadromy. Overall, the costs and benefits of anadromy versus residency, measured in terms of survival and reproduction, are finely balanced and small changes to the cost-benefit equation can lead to evolutionary changes in life history. The decision to be anadromous or resident is a quantitative threshold trait, controlled by multiple genes and environmental factors. The dichotomous nature of the trait is postulated to be the result of the environmentally influenced physiological condition (e.g. energy status) relative to a genetically determined threshold. Anadromy ensues when an individual’s condition fails to meet the threshold level, which varies between sexes and among individuals and populations. Environmental factors and genetic architecture may also directly influence life history, e.g., by altering gene expression. A strong genetic influence on the anadromy decision means that facultative anadromy can be altered by natural selection driven by changes such as differential exploitation, stocking with farm-reared brown trout, partial barriers to migration, and changes in climate, and freshwater and marine productivity, together with parasite, pathogen and predator abundance resulting in reduced marine survival and growth. Further studies of the factors determining life history choice, together with multiple population estimates of heritability and differential reproductive success (fitness), are required to understand fully the impact of natural and anthropogenic environmental changes on sea trout dynamics

Anadromy, potamodromy and residency in brown trout Salmo trutta: the role of genes and the environment

Brown trout Salmo trutta is endemic to Europe, western Asia, north‐western Africa and is a prominent member of freshwater and coastal marine fish faunas. The species shows two resident (river‐resident, lake‐resident) and three main facultative migratory life histories (downstream–upstream within a river system, fluvial–adfluvial potamodromous; to and from a lake, lacustrine–adfluvial (inlet)–allucustrine (outlet) potamodromous; to and from the sea, anadromous). River‐residency v. migration is a balance between enhanced feeding and thus growth advantages of migration to a particular habitat v. the costs of potentially greater mortality and energy expenditure. Fluvial–adfluvial migration usually has less feeding improvement, but less mortality risk, than lacustrine–adfluvial–allacustrine and anadromous, but the latter vary among catchments as to which is favoured. Indirect evidence suggests that around 50% of the variability in S. trutta migration v. residency, among individuals within a population, is due to genetic variance. This dichotomous decision can best be explained by the threshold‐trait model of quantitative genetics. Thus, an individual's physiological condition (e.g., energy status) as regulated by environmental factors, genes and non‐genetic parental effects, acts as the cue. The magnitude of this cue relative to a genetically predetermined individual threshold, governs whether it will migrate or sexually mature as a river‐resident. This decision threshold occurs early in life and, if the choice is to migrate, a second threshold probably follows determining the age and timing of migration. Migration destination (mainstem river, lake, or sea) also appears to be genetically programmed. Decisions to migrate and ultimate destination result in a number of subsequent consequential changes such as parr–smolt transformation, sexual maturity and return migration. Strong associations with one or a few genes have been found for most aspects of the migratory syndrome and indirect evidence supports genetic involvement in all parts. Thus, migratory and resident life histories potentially evolve as a result of natural and anthropogenic environmental changes, which alter relative survival and reproduction. Knowledge of genetic determinants of the various components of migration in S. trutta lags substantially behind that of Oncorhynchus mykiss and other salmonids. Identification of genetic markers linked to migration components and especially to the migration–residency decision, is a prerequisite for facilitating detailed empirical studies. In order to predict effectively, through modelling, the effects of environmental changes, quantification of the relative fitness of different migratory traits and of their heritabilities, across a range of environmental conditions, is also urgently required in the face of the increasing pace of such changes

The Sloan Lens ACS Survey. XI. Beyond Hubble resolution: size, luminosity and stellar mass of compact lensed galaxies at intermediate redshift

We exploit the strong lensing effect to explore the properties of intrinsically faint and compact galaxies at intermediate redshift, at the highest possible resolution at optical wavelengths. Our sample consists of 46 strongly-lensed emission line galaxies discovered by the Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) Survey. The galaxies have been imaged at high resolution with HST in three bands (V_HST, I_814 and H_160), allowing us to infer their size, luminosity, and stellar mass using stellar population synthesis models. Lens modeling is performed using a new fast and robust code, klens, which we test extensively on real and synthetic non-lensed galaxies, and also on simulated galaxies multiply-imaged by SLACS- like galaxy-scale lenses. Our tests show that our measurements of galaxy size, flux, and Sersic index are robust and accurate, even for objects intrinsically smaller than the HST point spread function. The median magnification is 8.8, with a long tail that extends to magnifications above 40. Modeling the SLACS sources reveals a population of galaxies with colors and Sersic indices (median n ~ 1) consistent with the objects detected in the field with HST in the GEMS survey, but that are (typically) ~ 2 magnitudes fainter and ~ 5 times smaller in apparent size. The closest analog are ultracompact emission line galaxies identified by HST grism surveys. The lowest mass galaxies in our sample are comparable to the brightest Milky Way satellites in stellar mass (10^7 solar masses) and have well-determined half light radii of 0."05 (~0.3 kpc).Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in Ap

No More Active Galactic Nuclei in Clumpy Disks Than in Smooth Galaxies at z~2 in CANDELS / 3D-HST

We use CANDELS imaging, 3D-HST spectroscopy, and Chandra X-ray data to investigate if active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are preferentially fueled by violent disk instabilities funneling gas into galaxy centers at 1.3<z<2.4. We select galaxies undergoing gravitational instabilities using the number of clumps and degree of patchiness as proxies. The CANDELS visual classification system is used to identify 44 clumpy disk galaxies, along with mass-matched comparison samples of smooth and intermediate morphology galaxies. We note that, despite being being mass-matched and having similar star formation rates, the smoother galaxies tend to be smaller disks with more prominent bulges compared to the clumpy galaxies. The lack of smooth extended disks is probably a general feature of the z~2 galaxy population, and means we cannot directly compare with the clumpy and smooth extended disks observed at lower redshift. We find that z~2 clumpy galaxies have slightly enhanced AGN fractions selected by integrated line ratios (in the mass-excitation method), but the spatially resolved line ratios indicate this is likely due to extended phenomena rather than nuclear AGNs. Meanwhile the X-ray data show that clumpy, smooth, and intermediate galaxies have nearly indistinguishable AGN fractions derived from both individual detections and stacked non-detections. The data demonstrate that AGN fueling modes at z~1.85 - whether violent disk instabilities or secular processes - are as efficient in smooth galaxies as they are in clumpy galaxies.Comment: ApJ accepted. 17 pages, 17 figure

1988: Abilene Christian College Bible Lectures - Full Text

MISSIONS IN CRISIS: CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY Being the Abilene Christian University Annual Bible Lectures 1988 Published by ACU PRESS 1634 Campus Court Abilene, Texas 7960

Imaging and spectroscopy of arcs around the most luminous X-ray cluster RX J1347.5-1145

The cluster RX J1347.5-1145, the most luminous cluster in the X-ray wavelengths, was imaged with the newly installed Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on-board HST. Its relatively high redshift (0.451) and luminosity indicate that this is one of the most massive of all known clusters. The STIS images unambiguously show several arcs in the cluster. The largest two arcs (> 5 arcsec in length) are symmetrically situated on opposite sides of the cluster, at a distance of ~ 35 arcsec from the central galaxy. The STIS images also show approximately 100 faint galaxies within the radius of the arcs whose combined luminosity is ~ 4 x 10^11 Lsun. We also present ground-based spectroscopic observations of the northern arc which show one clear emission line at 6730 A, which is consistent with an identification as [OII] 3727 A, implying a redshift of 0.81 for this arc. The southern arc shows a faint continuum but no emission features. The surface mass within the radius of the arcs (240 kpc), as derived from the gravitational lensing, is 6.3 x 10^14 Msun. The resultant mass-to-light ratio of ~1200 is higher than what is seen in many clusters but smaller than the value recently derived for some `dark' X-ray clusters (Hattori et al. 1997). The total surface mass derived from the X-ray flux within the radius of the arcs is ~2.1 - 6.8 x 10^14 Msun, which implies that the ratio of the gravitational to the X-ray mass is ~1 to 3. The surface GAS mass within this radius is ~3.5 x 10^13 Msun, which implies that at least 6% of the total mass within this region is baryonic.Comment: 3 figures. Replaced with the final version as appears in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (Jan 10, 1998 issue). This incorporates some important revision